Hola todos!!!

Wow, it's been a while again and lots of things have happened.

To start of with, we did atwo and a halfweek hiking and trekking trip to some of Ecuador's highest mountains. The first days we went on some long hikes to get accostumed to the altitute and get back into shape. The initial trek was from 3.800 meters to 4.500 meters on the Chimborazo mountain, close to our hub city Riobamba. At the end of the trek we arrived at a famous little high altitude forest, called Polylepis, with beautiful small oddly shaped trees that created a very mystical scene, see picture below.

The second trek was from 3.800 meters to 4.800 meters to encounter a so-called 'hielero'. In the past there were up to 50 hieleros that went up the Chimborazo mountain every day with their donkeys to cut off large chunks of ice of the glacier which they sold at the local markets for all types of uses. Nowadays there are only two hieleros left, the guy on the picture below and his brother, both far into their sixties. Yup, people have refrigerators nowadays, so who needs expensive glacier ice...another century old tradition bound to disappear... Despite this, the two brothers still go up Chimborazo 2 - 3 times a week to cut out 6 pieces of around 10 kilos each which they sell to local ice cream vendors for a total of around 20 dollars, eg 60 dollars a week, eg 240 dollars a month, which is not bad at all by Ecuadorian standards. The ice cream produced with glacier ice is much better and does not melt as fast as our regular Häagen-Dazs because glacier ice is way more dense than refrigerator ice. Really, we tried it.

We then moved on to the Altar mountain, which is on the other side of Riobamba. Here we embarked on a 4 day trekking tour during which we tried to climb one of its summits of 5.060 meters. Whereas Chimborazo has a dry climat, Altar has a moist climate...very moist...incredibly moist. The first day trek up the mountain to 3.800 meters was tough as we struggled through knee deep mud at times. Believe us, that is very very very uncomfortable (a bit like quick sand). The first night, we slept in a tent on a small ridge under a rock (the only dry spot in a 10kms radius), overlooking a beautiful valley. Unfortunately we do not have any clear photosof the place under the ridge but it was great and the view over the valley was spectacular.

The second day it started snowing and storming. The idea was that we would try out our mountain climbing gear eg. helmet, crampons, ice-axe, some kind of ski-boots and ropes on the glacier and set up camp at 4.800 meters for the climb to the summit the next day. This was just sheer impossible due to the weather conditions (snow, snow, snow and high wind speeds...). We walked to the camp, called Italian Camp, and found out that it was totally covered in snow. No way to set up a tent here. So we succesfully did a try climb to a summit at 5.040 meters under really bad circumstances and returned to our original camp. That night it started raining like crazy and our whole camp was wet and muddy. It rained until the next morning. That's when we decided together with our guide, Eloy, to call the trek short and return to Riobamba. However, this meant that we had to return the way we originally came. Now if there was already knee deep mud on the way there just imagine how the road was after 24 hours of rain... The trip back that would normally have taken us about 2 hours took us 4-5 hours and we returned with mud up until our armpits, totally wet and exhausted, but happy to be back in civilization.

The next day, we drove up Chimborazo again, all the way to base camp at 5.000 meters. There we got on two moutainbikes and raced down the mountain like idiots to end up in a small village at about 3.000 meters. That was an awfull lot of fun!! The weather was a hell of a lot better and the speed was even better. We actually went so fast that we were surpassing cars and trucks on the way down. Very exciting!

The day after, we did the famous Devils Nose train ride that takes you from Riobamba to Alausi and back. Everybody can sit on the roof of the cargowagons and admire the beautiful Ecuatorian landscape passing by. The people at our travel agency in Riobamba told us that the ride takes quite long because the train derails so often. We thougth, yeah right, trains derailing, sure.... Well it did, at least10 times!! Fortunately, the train moves soooooo incredibly sloooowly that nothing serious can happen and every time we derailed it took the train people about 10 to 30 minutes to get it back on the tracks. Don't ask us how they did it, but they did it. All in all, it was a excruciating looooong ride from 06.00am to 17.30pm. Despite its length, the ride was surpringly comfortable, mainly because we both rented two cushions for 1 USD, while most people settle for 1 cushion per person only. You should have seen their poor misery uncomfortable faces, ha ha ha...The weather was great and the views were truly spectacular so we would recommend this to everyone.

The next day was D-day: the climb of Cotopaxi, Ecuador's most famous vulcano at a higth of 5.900 meters. We started the climb at 00.00am from basecamp at 4.800 meters. The weather was great, a clear sky, no wind, so you would think that circumstances could not be better to reach the summit. Think again....Unfortunately, we had not had the chance to really try out our climbing gear on a glacier, because the wheather sucked so much at Altar and climbing a glacier is pretty hard! With your crampons on, they make you go straight up the mountain, in stead of in zigzag mode. Its basically like climbing stairs for 6 hours in a row. Just try that... you can imagine it was very very heavy. Especially for Mischa, who had a very nasty cold and also found out that years of wearing fancy high heel shoes had shortened her calve muscles and achilles tendon so much that her feet where unable to make the right angle with the mountain. So she had to walk on her toes all the time, which totally exhausted her. That made us have to stop many times to catch breath, which is not a good idea on a glacier as it started to make cracking noices which even drove Eloy, our guide, into panick mode...not good.... Eventually, we had to give up at approximately 5.400 meters. Even though we were disappointed, we had some beautiful moments on the mountain that will stay with us forever. The sky was totally clear and you could see all the big vulcanos around us, including Chimborazo which was about 300kms away. More striking was that we could also see Quito's city lights shining from afar at a distance of 150kms, absolutely stunning and unforgettable.

The Cotopaxi fiasco made Mischa decide to skip Chimborazo so Thomas could improve his odds to reach the top. Unfortunately, the weather was much worse than on Cotopaxi, with lots of snow and very strong winds. Furthermore Thomas and Eloy were the only guys trying to reachthe top that night, which made Mischa very uncomfortable about the whole adventure. Starting at 5.000 meters at 00.00am, Thomas was able to climb to 5.800 meters but had to give up because his legs hurt too much. In fact it is being told that he felt like crying like a little baby because of the excruciating pain. The photo below seems to substantiate this rumour...hi hi hi.

A bit disappointing but the whole adventure was more than worth it. The excitement and the nature surrounding us was absolutely great. And we will for sure return to Ecuador one day to try and climb both mountains again...only we would come a bit better prepared, eg. after gaining some more experience with crampons and probably after shaping up a bit more...

That same day we said goodbye to Riobamba and returned to Quito. The next day we travelled to the jungle at the Cuyabeno nature reserve, pretty close to the Colombian border. To get there we first took a two hour flight to Lago Agrio, followed by a 3 hour car ride and another 3 hour by boat to finally reach our destination. Pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Our lodge was called Nicky Lodge and was really nice, with wooden houses and thatched roofs (see picture).

There was no electricity and we showered with water directly from the river. We spend the days doing boat tours and jungle walks in search of scary and less scary animals such as caymans, tarantulas, monkeys, piranhas, dolfins and anacondas. Fortunately or unfortunately, we did not encounter that many. We found it a bit boring and the circumstances did not make us feel a lot happier either. Everything was very moist and damp, the water from the shower was cold and mosquitos were eating us raw. No, the jungle is not really our thing andwe believe that we will not do jungle tours for a while. However, the group was really nice, we got to fish piranhas (pretty exciting) and feed caymans (very exciting!!!) so we have some nice memories as well.

Upon our return to Quito the idea was to take another two weeks of Spanish lessons to further improve our Spanish skills. However, Thomas got very sick with a nasty throat infection that kept him in bed for almost six days. In fact he was so sick that we almost decided to go to the dodgy local hospital. At a certain point he could not drink or eat anymore because he would cry out in pain. That's when Mischa decided to go to a local pharmacy to get some heavy duty medication. Since Thomas refused to take antibiotics ('I have to build up some resistance!!' - dumb), she got some painkillers. One of them is generally used after heavy surgery and provided Thomas with a great numbing buzz (the withdrawal effects are still notable). The other one we got, turned out to be on a black list in Ireland and could produce irreparable liver damage... oeps... so Thomas skipped that one. After six days with hardly any food, guess what was the first thing on Thomas' mind...yup, fastfood (see picture) & bigggg steaks!!!!!!!!!!

The day before yesterday, we flew to Lima, Peru. First impressions are good. We are located in Miraflores in a lovely hostal (www.hostalelpatio.net), which is the main area in Lima for tourist lodging. Miraflores is located at the sea and it has wide avenidas and people so far are very friendly. They build a beautifull mall right at the beach (Larcomar - www.larcomar.com) with great restaurants and bars and stunning views over the ocean... guess we will be spending some time there. The day after next, we will be leaving for Huaraz, which is located in Peru's Cordillero Blanco, or white mountain range. Yep, given that its a bit too cold here to go to the beach (15-20 degrees) we have decided to do more trekking and climbing in the mountains (one would think we would know better by now...) and then we are off for a 1 month trip through Peru and Bolivia, visiting most of the hightlights of both countries (see www.gapadventures.com/tour/sxml for a full itinerary). Danielle, a good friend from Holland, surprised us with the announcement that she has booked the same trip and we are very, very excited to meet someone from back home again!!!!

Well, that's it again for now.

Hasta la Pasta!!!!!!!!!!